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Dr. Michael Shaw
"Humans are weak. Humans should, from a purely evolutionary standpoint be your lunch. But a thousand years ago, we hunted you almost to extinction and enslaved the remnant of your species. That was a thousand years ago, and mankind has only gotten smarter - not stronger, not faster, far deadlier than either of those could ever be - in the millennium since. And now you've made us angry... bad call." -- Michael Shaw on interspecies diplomacy. Brief Bio Dr. Michael Shaw is a player character run by Colourcodedchaos, a physicist from Kent. Up until said player had a hissy fit six months ago, he was the only major human player, and as such served largely as an antagonist. This was, from his viewpoint, understandable; his entire family had been wiped out by dragons during the Fall of Man, and the dragons still called the humans barbarous. He worked for the human government at Sapiens City designing weaponry and a flying battleship called the A Wing and a Prayer. ''They made a few inconclusive raids on dragon hordes before Causton Mallett, the Prayer's home port, was razed to the ground in retaliation at the cost of both existing cruisers and thousands of innocent lives, including Shaw's only surviving family member, his daughter Stephanie. So far as he knows. He and the rest of his Special Projects Division were transported into another plane of existence. They spent eight years there, subjectively - and they were able to put together a true fleet, with both cruisers, small craft, and carriers. Led by the gigantic flagship ''Answered Prayer, the Human Grand Fleet crashed back into their native plane to find that a little more than a week had passed in it. This was, as you can imagine, somewhat disconcerting. They carved out some territory of their own, especially with Admiral Ritter's fleet to the south scoring a crushing victory over a large horde of stone dragons and sandwyrms. This period was notable for there being a thaw in relations between Shaw's own fleet and the dragon horde belonging to Aeolus, and the two armies worked together in an early engagement against the Empiricon. After this, the HGF retreated deep into human territory to lick their considerable wounds. It is there that they have stayed, and Shaw with them; watching, building, waiting for the perfect time to strike out and take the planet in the name of all mankind. Appearance Shaw himself is not a pretty man to look at; thin to the point of outright unhealthy, gaunt of face and with hair going prematurely grey (can't think why). At almost sixty subjective years, he is still youthful enough to be sure that a scorched-earth campaign against dragons and their ilk is the only way to keep humanity safe. And since humanity rather pissed dragons off, he's probably right. Nevertheless, he is a fundamentally kind man, and he has a ready smile when the mood takes him. He is a connoisseur of fine food, but a realist who understands the needs of the many under his command have to come before personal pleasure. His command, though, is basically nominal; he is the Air Chief Marshal, yes, but he delegates to more experienced people (like the aforementioned Ritter) in order to focus more on improving the HGF's tech base. This has garnered him many friends amongst the people of the deserts; he and his engineers have brought water and prosperity to what used to be terrified hamlets of subsistence farmers. When not aboard the Answered Prayer, he is to be found in the fortress-university of Redwater, home itself to about twenty thousand civilians and about half again as many soldiers of the Aeromarine Corps. The place's national anthem is Mack The Knife, by Louis Armstrong. This should tell you everything you need to know about Shaw's personality. The Grand Fleet To be added when I am not so tired.